


Let the Water Hold Me Down

by MilesHibernus



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Flashbacks, HYDRA Trash Party, M/M, PTSD, Rape, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-16 16:48:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5833108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilesHibernus/pseuds/MilesHibernus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Buchanan lives a pretty ordinary life, with an apartment, a cat, and a job.  It'd be great, were it not that he has bad dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Someone’s holding him down.  
  
Without knowing how, he knows he is stronger than the person on top of him, knows he could break the hold; knows that doing so is forbidden and he’ll suffer for it if he tries. The hot weight on his back makes him sick. It’s almost worse than the pain.  
  
“Not so bad now, are you?” the man snarls into his ear. “ _Zimniy Soldat_ ’s not so scary when it’s begging for my cock.” He’s heard that voice before, though he can’t remember when; it’s more familiar than his own, that chants _Please, harder, I need it, fuck me, please_. He wishes he weren’t hard, wishes his body would stop responding to the hand that strokes him in time with the thrusts. He doesn’t want them to think he’s enjoying this. He says what he’s been ordered to say, but more than anything he wants it to stop.  
  
But pleasure builds, excruciatingly slowly under pain and fear, and another man has taken the first one’s place by the time he comes, helplessly, with a cry that wants to be a scream—  
  
Jim’s eyes flew open in the dark. At the foot of the bed Tally made a questioning chirp and stood in a long, elaborate cat-stretch. She walked up his body and rammed her head into his chin, and he brought his right hand up to scratch her ears. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Didn’t mean to wake you.” It was probably silly to talk to the cat like she could understand him, but Jim didn’t care.  
  
He turned his head to check the alarm clock across the room. 3:58, and he sighed. That was pretty good for a nightmare night, but he’d been hoping for a little more sleep. Tally, at least, would be delighted to get her breakfast early. “C’mon, cat,” Jim said. He wrapped his good arm around her so he could stand up and padded in the direction of the kitchen.

* * *

By his normal (at least, his aspirational) wake-up time Jim had shaken off the bad dream. It helped that he hadn’t actually gotten off to...well, it was rape, there wasn’t really any way around it, and Jim knew that what his dreaming mind gave him had very little to do with what he really wanted but he didn’t like it when one of the violent dreams made him shoot off in his sleep like a teenager. Those days it was hard to put on his Friendly Salesperson face.  
  
For lack of anything better to do with his morning Jim went off to the bookstore an hour and a half early and got almost all his stocking done before he had to officially open the doors. His boss, a tiny woman named Stephanie, had hired him despite his lack of references and the fact that he had only one and a half functional arms. She had some kind of heart trouble that made it a bad idea for her to do her own heavy lifting, and his prosthetic, though not great at delicate work, was at least strong.  
  
Jim peered out from the welter of paperback romances when the bell rang to discover Steph standing just inside the door, dripping. Her blond hair was plastered to her head—it wasn't raining _that_ hard, she must have been out in it for at least a few minutes—and Jim thought _Mad as a wet cat_ , for more reasons than just that she was drenched.   
  
“Steph,” Jim said, trying to sound scolding, “what did I tell you about going out in the rain?”  
  
“You said I’d catch my death,” Steph replied. “Which never happened when my grandmother said it either, so don’t try it on me, Buchanan.” She peeled herself out of her jacket as she spoke, not that it made much difference; everything she was wearing was soaked through. “There were a couple of teenagers tormenting a dog in the alley two blocks down. I didn’t want to have to keep track of my umbrella.”  
  
Jim sighed and abandoned the romances. “Did you run ‘em off?”  
  
“I gave them the big sister voice and they cheesed it,” Steph said with grim satisfaction. “The dog ran too so it can’t have been too bad off.”  
  
“You know gettin’ yourself all worked up isn’t good for your heart,” Jim said over his shoulder as he went to the tiny office-slash-breakroom. Steph kept an eclectic assortment of gear back there for exactly this kind of occasion, including a couple of large towels. Jim snagged one.  
  
“I survived for twenty-six years without you,” Steph said loftily when he came back out. “I don’t need you to remind me what’s bad for my heart.”  
  
“But if you died I’d be out of a job,” Jim said, and dropped the towel on her head, rubbing it into her hair despite her outraged squawk. “Next time call me, I’ll come and glare at ‘em.”  
  
Steph fended him off enough to take over the drying herself. “You do give great glare,” she said thoughtfully.

* * *

Jim went out to get their lunches, turning up his collar against the last of the drizzle. When he got back he and Steph went to the back room, leaving the door open so they’d hear any arrivals.  
  
Halfway through his sandwich Jim said absently, “Hey, have you ever heard the phrase <Winter Soldier>?”  
  
Steph looked up at him, her brow furrowing. “Zim...what? What language is that?”  
  
Jim frowned and thought about what he’d said. “Uh, sorry. _Zimniy Soldat_. It means ‘Winter Soldier’. It’s, uh, Russian.” He didn’t let his voice rise in question.  
  
“There was an inquiry into the Mai Lai massacre called the Winter Soldier Investigation,” Steph said slowly. “They got the name from the Thomas Paine quote, I think. _These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman._ ” She took a spoonful of her chili. Jim liked to see her eating well, and it was adorable that she just had that quote memorized. “I didn’t know you spoke Russian.”  
  
Jim gave her a sideways smile and said, “Neither did I.”  
  
“We’ll have to test you, see how much you know,” Steph said. She seemed a little unsettled, and Jim couldn’t blame her; the reason he had no references was because he didn’t remember much of anything past a few days before he’d come into her store, looking for a job to fill his time with. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing to know about your employee—or your friend. But he had a bank account (he didn’t need the job for the money) and a Social Security card and a driver’s license, and no outstanding warrants for his arrest, so he figured it couldn’t be too bad.

* * *

He spent the evening watching movies with Tally curled on his chest. She hadn’t liked him for the first few days he could remember; he thought perhaps he’d acted different—maybe even smelled different, if something traumatic had happened to alter his memory. “One bonus of this amnesia thing,” he told the cat. “I get to see all the movies for the first time again.” When _The Princess Bride_ was over, Jim tapped his fingers on his laptop’s keys for a few seconds and then went to Wikipedia.  
  
The disambiguation page listed two “American war crimes investigations,” a 1972 movie about the earlier one, a play from 1943...and a conspiracy theory. He clicked it.  
  
_The Winter Soldier is an **urban legend** originating in the international **intelligence** community, said to have been responsible for at least two dozen **assassinations** , beginning in 1961 and extending to the present day._  
  
Jim skimmed down the page, trying to put together the most important points. The ‘Winter Soldier’ was accused of—or credited with—killing every important person to die violently in the latter half of the Twentieth Century, from Howard Stark through an assortment of businessmen, crime lords, diplomats and generals to JFK. The list of possibilities was a lot longer than two dozen, though most of them were marked tentative with asterisks. There were two pictures, neither one more than a roughly man-shaped blur from a distance; in one it was possible to make out a light-colored sleeve with a splotch on the shoulder, but there was nothing you could hope to recognize the subject from.  
  
_The Winter Soldier is rumored [by whom?] to have been involved in the **Insight Crash**. Multiple eyewitness accounts [9][10[11] place him in **Washington D.C.** during the several days before **Captain America/Steve Rogers’** release of sensitive **SHIELD** data to the **Internet**._  
  
“Weird,” Jim said aloud, and went to bed.

* * *

He’s on his knees and has been for a long time. His left arm hangs heavy and useless at his side, deactivated. There’s a hand petting through his hair; he is not allowed to press into it. “You’d stay here just like this forever if I told you to, wouldn’t you?”  
  
He doesn’t nod, doesn’t move; he's not permitted, even to answer a direct question, and he will be rightfully punished if he moves or speaks. Worse, he will have disobeyed. He doesn’t want to disappoint this man, who is blond and beautiful, who cares for him. He will not move, he will make no sound. Tears trickle from his eyes but the blond man loves him enough not to punish him for an involuntary reaction.  
  
“Good,” the blond man says. “Open your mouth.”  
  
He does, grateful that he's going to be used now, that it’s almost over. He knows he can take it for a little longer and then he’ll be released and he will not have been disobedient—  
  
Jim’s eyes flew open in the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

A week passed quietly. Jim got two full nights’ sleep and watched five of the six Star Wars movies. Then he tried an experiment, and went out running before bed at a flat sprint for as long as he could—which turned out to be much longer than he would have expected, but he was in good shape.  
  
Tiring himself out worked, in that when he woke up from a bad dream at quarter to three (one of the horrible creeping ones in which nothing overtly bad happened but he knew he’d messed up and it was only a matter of time) Jim actually managed to fall asleep again. The problem was that he dropped into a nightmare and it was very bad. It was the worst. It was holding a woman down as she screamed and struggled, telling her it didn’t matter, no one was coming to save her because they were all dead, fucking her brutally as the hand of his prosthetic tightened gradually on her throat so that the last thing she felt before she passed out was his orgasm, and almost better than the physical pleasure was the knowledge that he’d carried out his orders correctly, that he wouldn’t be punished, and Jim barely made it to the bathroom before he vomited.  
  
He leaned on the bathtub in the pre-dawn—Tally nosed him in the side making small worried noises and he lifted her into his lap—wondering if he should call off work. If he didn’t go to the store, he just knew Steph would try to do too much; she always did when he wasn’t there. The woman didn’t have the sense God gave a carrot, which he suspected was the product of growing up with a single father who had to work a lot to keep himself and his daughter fed and clothed. Steph was used to having to get by on her own, only more so since her dad had died her sophomore year of college, and didn’t seem to understand that she didn’t have to anymore.  
  
Finally he sighed and got up to rinse his mouth out.

* * *

“For God’s sake, Jim, what crawled up your ass and died?” Steph demanded, her hands on her hips.  
  
Jim let out a gusty sigh and leaned his forehead into the shelf. He could smell the books, the scent of old paper that made him think of hushed rooms and wooden cabinets with dozens of drawers. “I had a bad night last night,” he muttered, ashamed. Bad night or not he shouldn’t be taking it out on her. “I have...bad dreams sometimes, and then I don’t sleep right.”  
  
He heard her take a few steps toward him and her tone was much softer when she said, “You didn’t have to come in. I’d understand.”  
  
He braced his hands on the next shelf down and turned enough to see her with one eye. “Who’s gonna keep you out of trouble if I’m not here, Grant?”  
  
She rolled her eyes but a reluctant smile twitched at her lips. “Like you could stop me, Buchanan.”  
  
“Y’know, before I met you I didn’t have to check every damn alley I passed to make sure you weren’t gettin’ beat up in it,” Jim said lightly, though for some reason that didn’t seem quite right.  
  
“My hero,” Steph said in the same tone. “Just for that, I’m buying lunch.” The smile died and she went on seriously, “Is it...do you think you’re remembering something?”  
  
Jim laughed, though he had a feeling it would have sounded more sincere if he’d just said _ha ha_ and been done with it. “Pardon my French, but I really fucking hope not.”

* * *

After lunch Jim went to sit behind the counter while Steph ran the books in the office. (Steph cursed a lot when she was doing accounts; Jim tried not to find it cute.) He felt strange, a little disconnected, and it was hard to concentrate; he was flipping through a collection of old comic books he’d found in their latest shipment, and though he wondered if the comics writers had honestly thought the Army would let a sixteen-year-old hang around in an active goddamn war zone he couldn't really follow the story. Some nurse had gotten kidnapped, and that was about all he had.  
  
He was reading the same page for the fourth time, trying to tease meaning out of it, when he caught movement in the corner of his eye. Faint, clinical alarm ran through him like a current—no one should be able to get that close to him without being noticed. He dropped out of the chair and swept the metal arm into his attacker’s shins; she went down with a startled squeak and he lunged, grabbed her before she could hit the floor, and wrenched her arm up behind her back, holding her pinned to his chest. She was slippery, but strength to strength she couldn’t match him; now that he had a good grip—  
  
Her hair was blond, and he frowned; he’d expected red, though he didn’t know why. Then she looked up, her blue eyes wide and terrified, and Jim let go of Steph like she was white-hot and stumbled back until he hit the counter. He yanked his hands up between them like he could fend her off, or protect her. " _Oh God_ ," he choked, feeling his gorge rise. Steph took a step towards him and he flinched. She froze.  
  
"OK," Steph said slowly. "What the hell just happened?"  
  
"I'm sorry," he said desperately. "I'm so sorry, I didn't— _are you all right?_ Steve, tell me I didn't hurt you—"  
  
"I'm fine!" she exclaimed. "Jim, I'm OK, look." She held her hands out. Her wrists looked delicate, fragile. "See? Not even a bruise."  
  
His legs wouldn't hold him and he sat down hard. "Just...just give me a minute and I'll get out," he said. He couldn't look up. "I'll, you can just, I won't come back, I promise."  
  
Steph knelt in front of him and he tried to curl away, to not touch her. She ducked her head to meet his eyes. "James Buchanan, that is the stupidest thing I ever heard," she said seriously.  
  
"Don't be—I could have killed you!"  
  
"Well, next time I'll know not to sneak up on the combat vet when he's distracted, won't I?"  
  
Jim blinked. Steph shrugged and said, "It makes sense. You have a prosthetic arm and some really good reflexes there, and if you had some head trauma..."  
  
He swallowed. "That's all the more reason for me to stay away. What if I lose it again?" He took a deep breath. "I'm not safe, Steph."  
  
She drew a breath and let it out sharply. "OK. How about you go home, and we'll talk about it tomorrow. You'll feel better once you've had some sleep."  
  
He let her chivvy him up, let her extract a promise that he _would_ come back in the morning; he didn't have to stay. He walked home instead of risking the confines of the bus, where someone else might touch him when he wasn't expecting it.  
  
Tally was ecstatic to see him earlier than usual and twined around his ankles until he gave up and scooped her into his arms so he wouldn't trip over her, and he fed her and ate and watched a movie, though at gunpoint he couldn't have so much as named it afterwards, much less described the plot.  
  
When it got late enough he went to bed, but he didn't dare sleep.

* * *

"What it boils down to is, now I know I have to be a little more careful, and so do you," Steph said. They were in the office, which meant Jim was much closer to her than he felt comfortable with. The _Sorry, we stepped out_ sign was on the front door.  
  
"You don't understand," Jim said. "I didn't even know who you _were_ for a second there."  
  
"Yes, and you still didn't hurt me," she said, implacable. Jim thought despairingly that he should have known better than to let her talk to him again; she had no sense of self-preservation and she could talk him into _anything_.  
  
"But I could have," he said, and even he could hear it was weak.  
  
"But you _didn't_ ," Steph said. "That is the only thing that matters, Jim. You didn't hurt me, and you won't."  
  
"There's no way for you to know that."  
  
"Sure there is. It's you." She grinned at him, wide and reckless, and Jim couldn't decide if he wanted to throw his hands in the air or kiss her.  
  
"Stephie," he groaned. "If nothing else scaring you like that ain't good for your heart."  
  
"You let me worry about my heart," she said, and held up a firm hand when he started to protest. "No point in arguing, Buchanan, it's settled. Now as I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted: do you think we need a part-timer around here?"  
  
Jim sat back and put his hands over his face. "I'd feel better if you had someone with you in the evenings," he said in defeat.


	3. Chapter 3

He went out to pick up lunch and got halfway there before realizing he’d forgotten his wallet. When he came back into the store Steph was nowhere to be seen but his ears were good enough to hear her voice, very faint, on the other side of the back door leading to the alley. “I’m not sure it’s holding...he called me Steve, for one thing,” she said. She sounded a little different, a little more Midwestern maybe. There was a pause, while Jim stood bent over the counter with one hand on his wallet. “Well if you’d picked up your goddamn phone the first fifteen times I called you, you’d’ve known sooner.”

Jim eased the door open, careful not to let the bell chime. “I think it’s OK for now. He didn’t hurt me, and I talked him out of leaving.” He didn’t want to embarrass her by letting her know he’d overheard; she had every right to tell her friends what had happened. Maybe one of them would be able to talk some sense into her.

He walked with his hands in his pockets, thinking. Had he really called her Steve? It certainly wasn’t impossible; he hadn’t exactly been at his best. (It seemed to be fashionable to call girls by boys’ names these days anyway—Lindsey, really? _Ashley_ , for God’s sake.) Steph hadn’t sounded offended by the slip, though, more worried. Worried for him, when she should be worried about herself. Jim shook his head.

* * *

It took them a few days to settle back into rhythm, because Jim tensed up every time Steph got within twenty feet of him, hyperaware of her location at all times. It helped that he was pretty good at keeping track of people, even when they were behind him; he didn’t have to worry that she was going to sneak up again, even by accident.

It also took a few days for him to sleep, and he only risked it because he knew he’d start getting clumsy if he didn’t. The first morning he woke up with a vague feeling that he’d had a bad dream but no memory of it, and that was good enough for him; after that he settled back into the familiar routine of waking up badly three or four nights out of five.

Steph hired a couple of college students to work evenings with her, though neither one was what Jim thought of as useful backup. He supposed they’d at least make prospective muggers think twice just because they’d be more people to deal with. It made the store feel a little less cozy, a little less like him and Steph against the world, but he was all right with that if it meant she was safer. Not that she couldn’t take care of herself, but everyone could use a hand sometimes.

* * *

She says, “You know me,” and he shouts, “No I don’t,” and punches her hard in the face with the metal hand, but she doesn’t go down, the stubborn idiot. She’s too _tall_ , when did she get so tall so that he can’t protect her anymore? She’s his mission now and that never would have happened before. 

“Jimmy. You’ve known me your whole life,” she insists. He backhands her and she falls to hands and knees on the disintegrating glass and he thinks, _Stay down, just stay down_. But she doesn’t, weaving to her feet. “Your name is James Buchanan.”

“ _Shut up_!” The blow sends her sprawling. She’s bleeding, he shot her three, four times, there’s a stab wound in her shoulder and blood on her stomach, but she stands up _again_ and claws the cowl from her head. She looks so much different without it and for a second he can only stare.

“I’m not gonna fight you,” she says steadily, and lets the shield drop. “You’re my friend.” 

For some reason that infuriates him and he charges her, catching her around the waist, and they both fall; she’s flat on her back and he straddles her, pinning her down, and snarls, “You’re my _mission_ ,” and punches her, two times, three, “You’re. My. Mission,” a punch for every word (the mission has already failed and he’ll be punished and it’s _her fault_ ), and she doesn’t even try to fight, even though he knows she could; he pulls his hand back again and she slurs, “Then finish it—"

Jim’s eyes flew open in the dark. He curled onto his side and pressed his good hand over his face and didn’t cry.

* * *

He made himself stay in his apartment until he was crawling out of his skin; better to sit and brood there than in the shop, where Steph might catch him at it. When he couldn't stand it anymore he walked to work, which he’d found he actually enjoyed, though he’d have to start taking the bus again once the weather got cold.

Jim unlocked the door only a few minutes early and went around to check the shelves. He was back in the corner Steph referred to as History Purgatory (because it was where outdated history books went to languish) when the bell jingled merrily and a man’s voice called, “Hello?”

Jim froze where he stood. Something about that voice...bothered him. He shook himself, said, “Sorry, I’m back here,” and pasted on the Friendly Salesperson face as he took the few steps necessary to round the shelves.

The man standing on the welcome mat was tall and muscular and good-looking. What little hair Jim could see peeking out below the ball cap he wore was blond and he had the fair complexion to go with it, and he was staring, his face a mask of relief. “Bucky,” he breathed.

Jim blinked and tilted his head. “Isn’t that Captain America’s sidekick?”

The blond man (not the blond man from his dreams) rocked back on his heels like he’d been slapped. “You’re not a sidekick,” he said with low-voiced sincerity.

Jim chuckled. “Not Captain America’s anyway.” His mystery customer’s face flashed with...hurt? Jim felt the first twinges of a headache. “If that’s what you’re looking for, though, you’re in luck, there’s been a lot of interest in Cap ever since the Battle of Manhattan. Even the wartime fictional stuff got reprinted.”

The customer looked baffled. Jim waited, and finally the man said, “What’s...what's your name?”

“Jim,” he said. “So, where are we looking?”

“Jim,” the man repeated. His brows were so furrowed he could have held a pencil between them. “I’m Steve.” He pulled a notebook and pen out of his pocket.

“Aha!” Jim said, and pointed a playful finger. His head hurt, but he could do Friendly Salesperson with worse than this. “I’m onto you, pal.” Steve looked up from his notebook, his eyes wide. “You’re into Captain America because you have the same name.”

“Um,” Steve said. “Something like that?” He wrote quickly.

Jim rubbed his good hand over his forehead. The headache was getting worse fast, and he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised; last week had been stressful and he knew he wasn’t over it yet. “OK, great, we can see what we, uh, have.”

His sentence lost momentum as Steve held out the notebook to him. In block letters that any teacher would have despaired of, Steve had written IS SOMEONE LISTENING?

Jim looked up and met Steve’s eyes. “I’m...I don’t understand what you’re asking,” he said, and suddenly his voice was shaking.

“I’m not here for books,” Steve said.

Jim had to swallow, digging his thumb into his temple as if that would make it stop hurting. “Well, books’re what we got, so.”

Steve stepped towards him, slowly enough that Jim didn’t startle, and put a careful hand on his forearm. “Jim. Bucky. It’s me. You knew me.” He paused and a pained smile curved his lips. “You _know_ me, or at least I hope you do.”

Jim put out a hand blindly, groping for support. Steve was still talking, but he couldn’t make out the words. His head pounded like it was going to explode and the last time he’d had a headache this bad, he’d been looking up at fucking Zola, and it was like the name broke the dam; his knees gave out and he crumpled, clutching at his head.

Steve crouched over him, hands on his shoulders, his voice low and urgent. “Bucky, Buck, what’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong.”

He shook his head as it filled with images, all the things he dreamed about; he clenched his teeth against the scream that wanted to break free. But there were other memories, and Steve was in some of them, Steve short and skinny and fragile, Steve suddenly tall and strong with a body that fit his soul, and he grasped for those moments in the flood.

He had no idea how long it had been when the pain started to recede, but Steve was still there, his hands warm and grounding. “Bucky?”

“Steve,” he said, and what the hell, he could be Bucky; he’d been Bucky longer than he’d ever been Jim, and _anything_ was better than _Zimniy Soldat_. “Steve, how much of that really happened?” His voice cracked, but he forced the words out. “Tell me I didn’t hurt you.” Because he remembered now, remembered the roof, and the bridge, and the helicarrier. He remembered how angry he’d been. But someone who could make him forget, maybe they could make him remember _wrong_. 

Steve’s lips made an unhappy line and Bucky’s heart sank. “You thought you had to, Buck,” he said with obvious reluctance. Because of course he wasn’t going to lie, he was a terrible liar.

“Oh God,” Bucky said. “If that’s real—” It couldn't be real. No one could really be as evil as what he remembered, not in the real world. Could they?

“Anything you remember is probably real,” Steve said grimly.

“ _Pierce_ ,” Bucky said, with loathing so strong he could taste it.

At that Steve smiled. It wasn’t a pretty smile. “Pierce is dead. Quicker than he deserved but at least the bastard’s paying for it now.”

Bucky closed his eyes. “What the hell year is it, Steve?”

Steve laughed, a quick startled laugh, and said, “2015. August, if you want to get—”

The bell over the door jingled merrily and Steph exclaimed, “What the hell is going on here?”


	4. Chapter 4

She was standing there in one of the old-fashioned dresses she favored—probably for his benefit, Bucky realized—and he caught the moment she recognized Steve, freezing.  
  
Bucky looked at her with new eyes: she didn't really resemble Steve, no one would mistake her for his sister, but her coloring was perfect and her hands and feet were a little too big for the rest of her, and more than anything she held herself like it was impossible that anyone would ever deny her.  
  
"Oh God," Steph said quietly.  
  
Bucky’s thoughts slowed to the Winter Soldier’s deadly calm and he was on his feet before he realized what he meant to do. Steve tried to stop him but he evaded the grab without thought. If Steph was field-trained she’d been hiding it perfectly, and at this range she couldn't draw a gun in time. She didn't try to run, though he wasn't sure if she was trapped by fear or just aware he'd catch her anyway.  
  
He pushed off the last step to hit her hard and bore her over backwards, not trying to cushion the landing except that he made sure she didn’t hit her head because he needed her to _talk_. “Hail Hydra,” Bucky said, the affectless growl all too easy.  
  
“I’d rather not,” Steph said. She was breathless from the fall but the look on her face was resignation. “Jim—”  
  
He slapped her with his flesh hand, not hard, just enough to startle. “Bucky!” Steve exclaimed. He ignored him. “Don’t talk to me like we’re friends,” Bucky ordered. Steph winced and nodded. “What’s your real name?”  
  
“Katrina. Katrina Georges. If we stay here someone might see us,” she said, and Bucky thought it over.  
  
“Is the office bugged?”  
  
“Not while I’m here,” she said. “Your place is, though.”  
  
Bucky stood and hauled her to her feet by her wrists. The metal arm didn’t move like it was supposed to; it was stiff, slow to respond. They must have put an inhibitor in it, because while it wasn’t quite as dextrous as his right, he could remember it being much better than this. He had a flash of memory, crouching behind a car and pulling one of his little sphere-grenades from its place, setting it by touch, intending to roll it into the Black Widow’s hiding place to drive her out...he shook his head. “Let’s go.”  
  
He put her in the desk chair and sat on the edge of the desk himself leaning forward with his forearms resting on his knees. There was little enough room between the desk and the wall that she couldn’t make a move he couldn’t reach. Steve took unhappy sentry at the closed door, arms crossed over his chest.  
  
Steph—Katrina drew a shaky breath. “There’s a STRIKE team on call but their response time is three minutes minimum. I’m supposed to keep you under control by...” She grimaced.  
  
“By being me,” Steve said expressionlessly.  
  
“Yes,” she said, and now she looked ashamed. Bucky didn’t buy it, but he had to admit she was damned convincing. Maybe she _was_ a Widow; maybe she’d been faking her body language all along, even when she didn’t know she was being observed. “They picked me because of how I look.” She smiled, a flash that was there and gone. “I don’t have heart problems either.”  
  
“You’re making this very easy,” Bucky said.  
  
Katrina made a sour face. “I never wanted to be doing it in the first place. I signed up to work for SHIELD, not Hydra.” Steve made a small, surprised noise; Bucky carefully didn’t react at all. “A couple of months before Insight, my boss started acting weird. Personal. Taking an interest, you know? And then the data dump happened and she killed herself because she was Hydra. She’d been feeling me out, and I thought...I thought I was out of a job but I was lucky she didn’t get a chance to try recruiting me. I decided I didn’t want to be in the game anymore, moved here, and opened the store.” She paused and for the first time her eyes filled with tears. “Three months ago my folks were in a car accident. The morning after the funeral I went downstairs and there were two men in the living room who showed me live video of my brother Peter.” She swallowed. “He’s sixteen.”  
  
“Hydra has him,” Steve said, disgusted.  
  
“They let me talk to him once a week, but even he doesn’t know where he is. Nothing happens to him as long as I stay here and make sure the Winter Soldier stays under control and, well.” She wiped furiously at her eyes and her slumped shoulders straightened. “So you can kill me if you want. I might as well fuck them as hard as I can before I die because Peter was dead the second you remembered who you are.”  
  
“We’ll see about that,” said Steve. Bucky...wasn’t sure what to think. The story was certainly plausible; Hydra didn’t scruple at using hostages to guarantee behavior.  
  
“Why didn’t they just tank me again?” It would have been safer than relying on a memory wipe holding for an extended period, and his dreams were evidence enough that it hadn’t been solid even in the beginning.  
  
“Tank you?” Katrina asked, looking baffled.  
  
“Cryo,” he said impatiently. “Why didn’t they put me back in cryo?”  
  
Her mouth hung open for a second. “Cryo-sleep _works_?” she asked, and for some reason Bucky found her astonishment convincing.  
  
“Normal people, I think they just die, but it works on him,” Steve said, with grim humor. “It’d probably work on me.”  
  
Bucky growled, “We’re not gonna find out.” It was irrelevant; maybe they just didn’t have a tank. Maybe they didn’t want the lead time of taking him out.  
  
Maybe they just thought it was funny watching him try to live like a normal person.  
  
"OK, here's what we're going to do," he said. "You and I are going to keep up the happy families act. Steve, what've you still got—the Black Widow have any contacts left? We need to figure out where her brother is."  
  
Steve smiled, the smile Bucky remembered from watching Hydra bases burn, and said, "I'll see what I can do."

* * *

He couldn't take Steve to his bugged apartment, so they walked instead.  
  
"Buck...you do remember me?" Steve asked.  
  
Bucky smiled and said, "Like I could forget your ugly mug, Rogers."  
  
Steve breathed a laugh. "Jerk."  
  
"I just call 'em like I see 'em," Bucky said.  
  
Steve punched him in the arm—fortunately for him he was on Bucky's right—and they went a few more paces in silence before he said, "If you need me to leave you alone, I can do that." It was pretty clear he'd rather gouge out his own eyes with a spoon, but Bucky knew he meant it. "I just. I just needed to see you were OK."  
  
Bucky sighed. "I didn't...I didn't run because of you, Steve. I didn't even know for sure who you were for the first, must've been a month or more. Hell, I barely knew who _I_ was. And once I figured that out, it just seemed safer to stay dark for a while. I was thinking about how to get in touch when they caught up with me."  
  
"How'd that work, anyway?" Steve asked. "I noticed you're not exactly a pushover."  
  
When the Soldier was trying to kill him. Bucky suppressed the wince and said, "There were a couple of deep-implant triggers. One-use, last resort stuff. Guy walked up to me in a bar in Singapore and said _Sputnik_ and I fell over. By the time I could move again they had restraints on me." He looked up at the sky. "And then I woke up in an apartment with no memory and a cat."  
  
Steve almost stumbled. "You have a cat?" he demanded, and Bucky started to laugh.


End file.
